Gene’s Blog: The difference a few winters make

Full disclosure: I like to read in the bathroom, but judging from the above picture, I'm not doing it fast enough.

The reading, that is.

My wife is in the midst of a post-Christmas purge during which we decide what needs to stay and what has to go. To sum up the process, my stuff is destined for the curb. Hers isn't going anywhere, but I digress.

Magazines are wonderful things (you DO remember them, don't you?), serving in the moment as in-depth sources of current information and living on as snapshots of a moment in history. My powder room pile is like a core sample of the past few years, composed mostly of “Time” and “Sports Illustrated” issues with the odd baseball scorecard flecked in between.  As I purged, I found a few from roughly the same moment in them–January of 2017 or thereabouts, to be exact.

A new President was taking office. A new NBA superstar was emerging with “MILWAUKEE” across his chest. And a veteran quarterback was leading the beloved Green Bay Packers to new-but-expected post-season heights. S-I predicted a Pack/Patriot Super Bowl, one Green Bay was on the cusp of making after a thrilling 34-31 win over Cowboys in Dallas to send the Packers to the NFC Championship game in Atlanta the following weekend. We were collectively wondering if it was 2010 all over again when the Pack won out down the stretch including the victory that counted the most, another one in Dallas in Super Bowl XLV.

The S-I snapshot of the 2017 one in Big-D is telling in that it seemed greatness was assumed, that winning was going to be part of the Pack's DNA not just for a that season but for as long as quarterback Aaron Rodgers remained upright.

It was the latest victory in the “Run The Table” 2016 season, the one where Rodgers threw one of those passes-for-the-ages that seemed to happen about four times a game during that run, this heave finding tight end Jared Cook along the sideline to set up the game-winning Mason Crosby field goal. Of the catch (made with just three seconds left), Cook would say, “With 12, anything can happen.” Head coach Mike McCarthy was asked by S-I  “how it feels to have a QB savant on his side when hearts are palpitating and magic is required. 'It feels great,' he said. 'Feels good in the first quarter, too.'”

All of those feels. What happened to 'em?

The Falcons would paste the Pack the following weekend and things in Titletown haven't been much fun since. 2017 saw Rodgers go down with a broken collarbone, revealing to all that the Packers were also-rans without their starting QB and that McCarthy had failed to train up his reserve Brett Hundley. Fans saw the year as a one-off, with Rodgers ready for '18 and a new backup signalcaller, DeShone Kizer, on the depth chart. 

Two years since the feels, and here the Packers are: a second straight losing season that ended with Joe Philbin and not McCarthy on the sidelines, the breakup between he and Rodgers obvious and well-documented. Newly minted head coach Matt LeFleur is in Green Bay not because of his impressive pro record but because he shared time with the league's flavor of the month, L-A's Sean McVay. Seems anyone who stood in line behind the Rams head coach at the corner ATM has a shot at running an NFL team these days, longevity and career won-loss marks be damned.

That, too, has changed in the league since that S-I hit what was then the top of my bathroom heap two winters ago. Youth is being served, not just on the roster but also with the headset, as every team is in search of the next offensive savant. Defense wins championships, they used to say.

That's soooo two-years ago.

It was then that Cook, having paired with Rodgers to save Green Bay's playoff bacon for at least one more week, closed out the magazine piece by speaking thusly: “Look man, we've got number 12…I don't know what other explanation you need” in summarizing another Rodgers-authored thrill show. Two winters ago, fans thought there were so many more of them coming. Now, there are doubts as what some deem a “soft-rebuild” begins.

A winter of discontent sets in as the Super Bowl is someone else's party–again. It's been eight seasons now since the Packers represented the NFC in the big game. Fans curse what they deem another year of wasted Rodgers' greatness but fact is, he wasn't all that fabulous last autumn. The team collectively played its best on opening night when it squeaked by the eventual division-champion Bears, Rodgers playing on a knee and a half, willing his teammates to victory. Are there more of those left in the tank?

“We've got number 12,” a former teammate once said. And now, we also a new head coach and realigned front office with a bunch of holes to fill. 

Speaking of holes, there's a basket in a bathroom that needs fresh reading material. I'd like to fill it with more tales of splendor that we can share again two years from now, stories about this being a mere bump in the Pack's return to glory and the ascension of a new, untested head coach who magically invigorated “12” and returned him to past glory.

Let's hope that's sooo two years from now, maybe sooner.